2-10. False. A person does not have to want to stop drinking, admit he or she is an alcoholic, or "hit bottom" before he or she can be helped. One of the symptoms of alcoholism is the inability of the afflicted to recognize its severity. Many people with an alcohol problem can be persuaded to seek treatment through a process called "intervention" in which the problem is directly confronted (Dunlop, Manghelli, & Tolson, 1990; Schmall, Gobeli, & Stiehl, 1989).

2-11. True. Because of several bodily changes, alcohol is metabolized and excreted at a slower rate in the older person. As a result, a given amount of alcohol results in a higher blood alcohol level and quicker intoxication for an older adult than for a younger adult (Schmall, Lawson, & Stiehl, 1990; Willenbring & Spring, 1990).

2-12. True. Sharon (1971) indicates that the pattern of the scores in different disciplines changes as a function of age. Performance on tests of humanities, social science, and history improves with age, while achievement in mathematics and the natural sciences declines. Knox (1986) notes that performance in learner tasks such as vocabulary and general information improves during adulthood.

2-13. True. One of the most significant problems in assessing an adult's ability is the degree to which information has been obtained from cross-sectional rather than longitudinal studies. The decline in intellectual function with increasing age intimated by cross-sectional data (Jones & Conrad, 1933; Wechsler, 1955) has not been supported by longitudinal studies, which indicate growth into middle age and beyond. When a wide range of learning abilities is included, the general conclusion is that most adults in their forties and fifties have about the same ability to learn as they had in their twenties and thirties, particularly when they can control the pace (Knox, 1977).

2-14. True. For normal learning tasks after age fifty, the amount of illumination becomes a critical factor. A fifty-year-old is likely to need 50 percent more illumination than a twenty-year-old (Cross, 1981).

2-15. True. With increasing age, there is a decrease in the ability of the eye to focus on objects at varying distances. This results mainly from a loss of elasticity in the lens of the eye (Hayslip & Panek, 1989). Between the ages of twenty and fifty, there is typically an appreciable loss of accommodation power and elasticity of the lens, after which the decline is more gradual (Knox, 1977; Rogers, 1986).